The present invention relates to audio visual information systems, and more specifically to a system for describing, classifying, and retrieving audiovisual information for compact descriptions of relationships.
The amount of multimedia content available on the World Wide Web and in numerous other databases is growing out of control. However, the enthusiasm for developing multimedia content has led to increasing difficulties in managing accessing and identifying and such content mostly due to their volume. Further more, complexity and a lack of adequate indexing standards are problematic. To address this problem, MPEG-7 is being developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG), which is a working group of ISO/IEC. In contrast to preceding MPEG standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 which relate to coded representation of audio-visual content, MPEG-7 is directed to representing information relating to content, and not the content itself.
The MPEG-7 standard, formally called the “Multimedia Content Description Interface” seeks to to provide a rich set of standardized tools for describing multimedia content. It is the objective to provide a single standard for providing interoperable, simple and flexible solutions to the aforementioned problems vis-a-vis indexing, searching and retrieving multimedia content. Software and hardware systems for efficiently generating and interpreting MPEG-7 descriptions are being developed.
More specifically, MPEG-7 defines and standardizes the following: (1) a core set of Descriptors (Ds) for describing the various features of multimedia content; (2) Description Schemes (DSs) which are pre-defined structures of Descriptors and their relationships; and (3) a Description Definition Language (DDL) for defining Description Schemes and Descriptors.
A Descriptor (D) defines both the semantics and the syntax for representing a particular feature of audiovisual content. A feature is a distinctive characteristic of the data which is of significance to a user.
As noted, DSs are pre-defined structures of Descriptors and their relationships. Specifically, the DS sets forth the structure and semantics of the relationships between its components having either Descriptors and/or Description Schemes. To describe audiovisual content, a concept known as syntactic structure which specifies the physical and logical structure of audiovisual content is utilized.
The Description Definition Language (DDL) is the language that allows the creation of new Description Schemes and Descriptors. It also allows the extension and modification of existing Description Schemes. The DDL has to be able to express spatial, modification of existing Description Schemes. The DDL has to be able to express spatial, temporal, structural, and conceptual relationships between the elements of a DS, and between DSs.
Conventional systems have been unable to address the issue of weights for description schemes. A “weight” is a method of establishing the strength of a relationship between description schemes, representing properties or parts of a description. Disadvantageously, conventional systems place weights on entities themselves so that future changes to weights cannot be carried out in a simplified manner.
Therefore there is a need to resolve the aforementioned disadvantage and the present invention meets this need.